


Psych You Out In The End

by DoctorFitzy (KittooningMalijah)



Series: Psych AU [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Deception, F/M, Fitzward Week 2k15, Gen, Multi, Team as Family, under cover work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/pseuds/DoctorFitzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few months of under cover work to help his brother get reelected was all it was supposed to be. It was never supposed to turn into lying to the police about being psychic, of all things, and nearly getting his closest friends kill.</p>
<p>Psych-esque!AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psych You Out In The End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fitzward Week 2015, days 5 (favorite AU) and 7 (free day).  
> (Loosely) based on Psych.

**August 13, 2015**

It wasn't the first time Grant Ward had been in an interrogation room. It was far from it, actually, and it wasn't his first time being on the guilty side of the table, either. Of course, being guilty of arson as a minor was different from being guilty of what was technically serial murder, and the former didn't involve turning himself in before he was even remotely considered a suspect. He reminded himself that he hadn't had a choice, that he would be helping more people by telling the truth, that too many things had gone wrong for him to justify keeping the secret any longer; things had been going on for long enough, and it had to end before anyone else he cared about got hurt.

When the door opened, he kept his eyes focused on the two-way mirror on the opposite wall, trying to determine who might be behind the tempered glass for his confession, and only acknowledged the two people across the table from him with a small nod. They were confused, he knew that much, and he knew exactly why. Four years into their professional relationship, they were about to find out he may have never been on their side to begin with. And they had no idea that he had been lying to them at all.

There was no doubt in his mind that they were all good people, nearly everyone at the station was, and it made him sick to know that he had been lying to them for years, especially when the only two of them that knew his secret were sitting in a hospital room, recovering. Because of him. He never should have let things go as far as they did, even if he did commit some of his offenses with incorrect information. Those were the instances he was most afraid of talking about, because those were the instances he was most ashamed of, because they were the ones with the most collateral damage.

“Grant, I think you can understand that we don't know what to do here.” The sick feeling in his gut moved up to his chest, making it difficult to catch his breath when _Melinda May_ ,of all people, sounded more than just a little concerned. Suddenly, the reality of what he had done, of what he was still doing up until the moment he would say those words and, finally, tell everyone the truth, came crashing down over him. With the damage he had already done, there was no doubt in his mind that he would end up in one of the cells down the hall, and that would only be temporary until they could lock him up somewhere with much better security. He was a criminal – a killer, a danger to society, it might be better if they did just that. “You said yourself that you're guilty of something, but we don't know what that something is. You have to tell us.”

The answer was such a simple one that it was impossible to imagine that it would change so much. It would be easy to say that he lied, and to leave his offenses at that, but lying had led to more. Lying had led to killing and pretending and putting one of his best friends in a _coma_ , and just saying that he had lied wouldn't even hint at all of the other horrible acts he had committed in only a few short years. The only way this could all stop was if he owned up to all of it – even if it meant starting with one of the biggest secrets he had, the one lie he had never intended to tell in the first place, let alone for as long as he had. “I'm not psychic.”

The charade had been so much of his life for so long that, when he had first said the words a few weeks before, things had stopped making sense. Four years of his life had gone into keeping that lie intact, and tearing it down, even to help the people he had grown to care about safe, was crippling. He wasn't _Grant Ward, psychic detective_ anymore, though he really never had been; he was _Grant Ward, the man who had nearly killed his friends to hold a position in a notorious crime ring_.

When May spoke again, her voice was colored with curiosity and some of the confusion from before. While unethical, lying about having supernatural abilities wasn't illegal – although, it had interfered with so many police investigations that it might as well be, at least in this case. “If this is about what happened to Fitz, that isn't your fault. We never expected the Clairvoyant and his crew to ambush us, or else we wouldn't have brought Fitzsimmons on that sweep. No one here is to blame for what happened to them after they were taken – _Hydra_ is. We don't expect you to predict everything.”

Oh, if only they knew.

“Look, I have a lot to say, and you can't interrupt. It's a _save your questions for the end, please_ kind of story.” Two heads nodded their agreement and he took a deep breath, forcing out the words before he could lose what courage he had. “What happened to Fitzsimmons _is_ my fault, and not just because I didn't predict the ambush. If I knew things, if I could predict the future like I said I could, there is so much that I wouldn't have done – starting with the part I played in them getting hurt. I can't see or predict or sense _anything_ , I never could; I just have my sources for information. Fitz – Fitz is my fault. I was within Hydra for months before I met any of you, and to keep my rank within them to get more information, I caused that fire. You have to believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I'd known they were on board that boat. _Please_ , believe that much.”

The tension in the room thickened, and Trip, who had been quiet through everything else, took the silence as an opportunity to speak up. “If you're Hydra, and have been this entire time, then why should we believe _anything_ you say?”

“Because,” Grant exhaled with a hint of hope, the rest of his tone blatantly pleading for them to at least hear him out. “I've been helping you, and I know where they are, and I know who they are and... I know who the Clairvoyant is.”

**February 21, 2011**

“Walk with me, Grant.”

For the first time in his near four year term, Christian had met him at the front of the mayoral office and insisted they spend a few hours together to grab lunch and discuss job opportunities in the area now that Grant had officially moved into town – something about restoring their brotherly bond or some other ridiculous excuse that had made sense until he actually got there. The younger Ward brother was dreading every second of it.

“Look, Christian, good luck getting reelected in November, but I don't want a job fetching coffee for the guys who order your campaign buttons and then take the rest of the day off because they feel like they don't have to be here anymore. I'm not going to work for you just because you feel like you need one more person fetching coffee.”

He had moved back to town to prove to his family that he didn't need their help, not to take a job in politics working three tiers under his sadistic older brother. Besides, he had already applied to a number of other jobs, and even flipping burgers and pretending that his smile actually meant something while dealing with rude customers sounded better than that. Of course, that only meant that, when Christian closed the door to his private office behind them, he wouldn't have much of a choice in the matter by the time their discussion was over.

“What I need you to do is much more important than coffee.”

Lunch was obviously something they wouldn't get around to, and Grant was beginning to regret not grabbing at least a snack before making his way downtown. “Is it memos? Because I won't deliver memos, either.”

He knew it was ridiculous, trying to lighten the mood when the conversation was one that his brother wanted to have seriously, but there wasn't really any other way he could prove he _wasn't_ interested in working for his brother. There was no way that, so long as he was in his right mind, he would even go near the political system. He wasn't going to become his brother or his father. Still, with how things were going, he would probably end up with the job anyway. “Grant, are you aware of the promises I made to the people of this city when I got elected?”

The short answer was _yes_.

In the years before Christian's election, an old crime ring had reemerged, going by _Hydra_ just as they had back in the '40s, and had been robbing innocent people with reckless abandon. No one had really gotten hurt except for the insurance agencies being forced to dish out money to replace stolen valuables. The killing had only started during the Ward brother's term, after he had promised to do something to make the thieving stop. Needless to say, that didn't exactly work out as everyone had hoped.

“Hydra has only gotten worse, and if I don't do _something_ to at least slow them down, there's no way I'll even get close to reelection.” There was a question Grant wanted to ask – which was, _how could he do anything to help with that?_ – but there wasn't enough time to ask _anything_ before he got the answer that he hadn't yet inquired for. “I need your help. If you can get an in with Hydra, and maybe just point the police force in the right direction, I'll get reelected, and I'll pay your rent for as long as you're in town.”

The longer this went on, the more appealing the offer sounded. Of course, there was the matter of potentially killing innocent people, but he would likely be saving even more lives in the process. That must atone for _something_ in some circles. It was a pretty good idea, he had to admit, and there may have even been ways to _avoid_ the killing if he went about things carefully. Getting on his brother's good side for the foreseeable future was just an added bonus. There wasn't any real reason for him to say _no_.

There was just one problem.

“These criminals know who you are. Wouldn't it be strange if a _Ward_ suddenly wanted in with a crime ring that you've been vocal about trying to take out?”

Something in his brother's eyes made him uneasy, but he listened anyway, far too curious now that he knew there had been a bit of a planning process. “Not if you act like you hate me.” At that, Grant actually grinned while slowly shaking his head. He was going to end up having too much fun.

“Oh, Christian, I won't be acting.”

**October 2, 2011**

His fingers tapped on the wooden surface while he waited for the woman on the other side of the counter to sign his check. Considering he had helped the police force make more than a dozen Hydra related arrests over the course of only two months, it wasn't difficult to convince them to give him a bit of compensation for his trouble. Even if his brother was taking care of whatever rent he had to pay on a monthly basis, there was still food to worry about. Still, his real job was nowhere near over. It was one thing for Grant to give information out about how to find the lapdogs and errand boys, but if they wanted to take Hydra out completely, they had the ring-leader to consider.

From what he had found out, the man who organized everything called himself the Clairvoyant, and he was extremely secretive. Exactly three members of the ring had ever met him in person, a number Grant wasn't a part of, and only five others received direct orders. He wasn't one of them, either. There was a hierarchy to the group, even if it still seemed impossible to distinguish after nearly eight months on the inside. Without more time undercover to gather information, it would be impossible to even know who to point the police toward to get the names they needed.

“Well, if it isn't our Hydra sniffer dog.” An unfamiliar voice made him turn his head, watching the stranger approach with a wary gaze. Maybe the undercover operation had been going on for too long if a man in a police uniform was all it took to put him on edge. “It's _Grant_ , right? You're Christian's younger brother? The name's John Garrett. I'm pretty impressed with your work.”

The praise made him feel rather smug, though he had enough self control to not let it show in his expression while he was still being closely watched, and he pushed himself away from the counter to shake the older man's hand. “Yeah? Really, I just call in tips; it's nothing special. You're the ones doing all the real work.” The handshake was a firm one, though not unpleasantly so, and the wary feeling from before faded into nothing almost immediately. This was someone he might be able to trust if he was ever going to tell his secret to anyone. Despite the original plan, there was no feasible way to keep what he had been doing a secret forever. “Honestly, I'm only here to pick up a check. A man's gotta eat.”

This, at least, made John laugh – that is, until he got a look at the clock on the wall and his expression immediately sobered. “You know what, I'm late – I've got a lunch thing; you know how it is. Since you're here, could you run this file down to Fitzsimmons for me? Just down the stairs, the morgue is on the left, real simple to find. You're great. Keep up the good work.”

He barely had time to nod his head before the file was in his hands, another voice reminding him that he had been there for a reason besides becoming more of an errand boy to Christian and the justice force than he already was. “Your check, Grant.” He knew he thanked her, by name and everything, but more brain power had been put toward the file in his hands than remembering whether or not he was able to recite simple, practiced words, even while he put the slip of paper that provided his monthly income into his wallet.

The morgue was easy enough to find when he followed John's directions, and a quick glance inside through the glass door showed that there were two occupants attempting to talk over each other. Based on their behavior, he guessed they were either married – which was more likely, in his opinion – or, at the very least, in a long lasting relationship.

“There are organs _everywhere_ -”

“How many times do I have to tell you-”

“-and there's _no_ organization _whatsoever_ -”

“-it's my _job_ to dissect things?-”

“-Jemma, there is a _human liver_ -”

“-I've told you _more_ than enough times, Leopold,-”

“- _next to my sandwich_!”

“-you're not supposed to eat in here!”

Marriage was definitely looking like the more likely option.

Pushing the door open to enter the room, Grant set the file down on a table near the door before speaking up. Even then, he wasn't sure he wanted to interrupt the scene in front of him. If they were having an argument, he could always just set the file down and leave. Introducing himself might be better in the long run, however, especially when he would need friends that didn't commit murders and theft on a regular basis. He just hoped that speaking wouldn't blow up in his face. “Fitzsimmons?”

The two stopped talking immediately, turning to face him in clear confusion. It made sense – he wasn't even remotely familiar to either of them, and he had delivered a file he assumed was related to the body in the middle of the room. After a few moments, they were able to speak in much calmer tones, their flushed faces conveying their embarrassment at being caught in such an unprofessional moment. Pointed fingers signaled that they were introducing each other instead of themselves, and Grant moved his gaze quickly between the two of them to keep up with the new information they were feeding him at an almost alarming rate.

“Fitz.”

“Simmons. I'm ballistics; she's postmortem.”

It didn't take a genius to see that the body on the table in the middle of the room had been completely charred, and it didn't even look like it had really been touched yet. From the angle he was at, Grant couldn't see any obvious signs of a weapon inflicted wound. Unless the evidence had been burned away or entirely internal, there was no reason for a ballistics specialist to be working the case. Looking over at the file he had been asked to deliver, he found himself feeling even more confused.

Ian Quinn.

Quinn had been borrowing money from some of Hydra's top dogs, accumulating debt and refusing to pay any of it back until his research was complete – not that any of the money he had gotten from them actually went toward research of any kind. The man was too accustomed to his rich lifestyle to give it up when his company had gone under, and he had thought, incorrectly, that Hydra wouldn't notice when he used money that was supposed to go to developing new weapons for them to pay for a new pool.

Word of the happenings had spread, and orders trickled down from the Clairvoyant to either settle the debt or get rid of him – or both. In the end, a small troop of Hydra's best thieves had gone in to take what cash they could find, along with a handful of watches and expensive pens that couldn't be traced back to Quinn directly. Shortly after that, they'd sent in their new guy, an arsonist who could make it look like an accident and keep the incident from being traced back to Hydra.

That arsonist was Grant himself, which meant he _knew_ ballistics wouldn't be needed.

“Wasn't the Quinn fire an accident?” Two gazes watched him closely, and he figured that wasn't quite public knowledge yet, which might be a bit difficult to work around. “What I mean is, John Garrett asked me to bring the file down, and I've heard a bit about the fire, so I assumed they were connected. Why does ballistics need to be involved?” His questions and the reasoning behind them made sense, at least, but that wouldn't get them off his back if he knew too much. There had to be a way that he could let things slip without blowing his cover. “It was an accident, by the way. The fire. His company tanked last year; all the enemies he had had already taken that much, so they more than likely wouldn't go so far as to kill him without a purpose.”

There was still the matter of explaining how he knew that much, but he didn't have time to get out any kind of an excuse before the door behind him opened and he had to step out of the way of a fast talking woman with a laptop. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch, Fitzsimmons, but May votes homicide on the Ian Quinn case. I talked to Garrett about it this morning, and he said Quinn might have had Hydra connections that would explain where he had been getting his money since his last source of income went down like the Titanic, but I'm doubtful. There's no evidence of Hydra involvement, but I think I know who _is_ in- oh, hey, new guy. How long have you been standing there?”

Grant blinked, furrowing his brow while he stared at the woman who was familiar, whose name was buried somewhere in his head that he couldn't get to while actively trying to get the attention on something other than himself – he was almost certain it started with an S, or ended with an S, or had an S in it somewhere – and lamely gesturing to the file nearby. “I came by to pick something up, and I got to talking with John Garrett – well, he was talking, I kind of just stood there and listened – and he was late, or something, so he had me run this down here for him. Sorry, I can go if I'm interrupting something.”

The fact that he now had a new pair of eyes on him in addition to the two curious ones from before made him a bit uncomfortable, and he knew almost immediately that he wouldn't be able to get out of there without some kind of explanation – not that he had even the barest hint of an idea for one. There was no way in any level of hell that Grant would be able to come out and say he was a part of Hydra without feeling like he had betrayed them, and he had known these people for less than _five minutes_. Still, he had to give them _something_.

“I'm psychic.” The words came out too quickly to stop them, and he didn't have any idea where they'd come from in the first place, let alone how to build off of them so that he didn't sound ridiculous and completely insane. Unfortunately, the longer he went on, the more he sounded like he needed to be locked up in some kind of facility. “When I looked at that file about Ian Quinn, I got this vision about the fire. It seems like the wiring or something was faulty, but I mean, I don't exactly do a lot of work with electrical systems.”

Well, there went his hope of ever helping the police catch more Hydra killers ever again. It wasn't like he could do very much from a padded white room.

All at once, the stunned silence that had fallen upon the morgue disbursed, like the hurried conversation that picked up around him had been the sun that evaporated the dreary morning fog. Voices came at him from all sides, and for once the onslaught of questions and comments didn't bother him nearly as much as he had thought they would.

“Holy no way! Like, _actually_ psychic?”

“You can see the future and stuff?”

“How fascinating!”

“Could you see _our_ futures?”

“Would you mind going in for a brain scan and-”

“Jemma, leave the man alone. He's not an extra credit experiment.”

“Oh, Fitz, but imagine the scientific advancements that could come from a little-”

“ _Jemma_ , _no_.”

It took more self control than he was proud of admitting to not laugh as they all talked over each other, and he waited for the conversations to die down enough that he could actually be heard before speaking, a small smile managing to win the tug of war with the corners of his lips. “You know, it might be easier if you asked your questions one at a time. That way, I might be able to actually answer them.”

**February 21, 2011**

When Grant slid onto his favorite stool at the bar of the diner, he barely noticed the woman sitting just two seats away, far too concerned with asking the man behind the counter for some ice and a sandwich so that he could nurse his bruising eye. The fight between him and his brother wasn't supposed to get physical, but then Christian had brought up _the well_ and there was no way the conversation could possibly go on without someone throwing punches. In the end, at least he had gotten in some hits of his own even with the bruises he got.

Luckily, they'd both gotten away with only minor injuries before they'd been pulled off of each other by a few of Christian's employees that had been on their way out of the office for lunch. Still, that didn't excuse the fact that one of the darkest days of his life had been brought up for the purpose of some kind of show to entertain the crime committing public, and the fact that his anger would be channeled toward taking out the same people they'd been “acting” for only made him feel a little better. And _a little_ wasn't enough to keep him from clenching both hands into fists while waiting for his food.

That only meant that, when he heard the voice from beside him, he had to remember to not snap just because he had been having a roller coaster of a day. With every little bit of good he had gotten that day, the bad that came with it seemed like it would never end. “You look like someone who's had a pretty rough morning. Is it enough to start drinking before five?”

The question was enough of a reason for Grant to turn his head, looking over at the woman with a small, curious frown. He had no idea who she was, and she was clearly a bit younger than him, and she had absolutely _no_ reason to try to make conversation. She was either naïve or crazy, and he honestly didn't know which was worse, especially considering he had spent the last two hours doing everything he could to try to join a crime ring, and with the bruise starting to form under his eye, he didn't exactly look very friendly.

He shook his head instead of giving a verbal response, part of him hoping that she would take the hint and back out of the rest of the conversation. The rest of him knew that wouldn't happen, and that small part of him spent exactly thirty seconds being unreasonably hopeful until she opened her mouth again. “Well, _I'm_ having a drink. I got a new job today, and I guess I was just hoping I wouldn't be celebrating alone.”

Shifting his gaze in her direction again, he stared at her for a few moments before letting his shoulder sag. Despite everything his morning had turned out to be, he _did_ have a new job he could be celebrating while she did the same – technically, he _almost_ had a new job, one that would be his as soon as he actually made contact with a member of the ring about doing everything he could to destroy his brother. Most of it wouldn't even be an act.

“Congratulations on your new job.” It was easier than he had expected to make himself sound at least somewhat civil, especially because every word he said made the muscles in his face pull at the sore area around his eye. “The first round will be on me. I'm Grant, by the way.” He tacked his name on as an afterthought, after contemplating the idea that knowing her a little better wouldn't be entirely horrible, especially if it led to enough alcohol to numb the aches and pains from his day.

A smile lit up her face immediately and he watched with a smaller one of his own while she practically wiggled on her stool with excitement at potentially finding a decent drinking buddy. “It's nice to meet you, Grant. You can call me Skye.”

**August 13, 2015**

“Grant, we can't do anything to help if you won't give us any information.”

“All I've been _doing_ for the past _hour_ is giving you information.”

It had been over an hour, and he had barely even gotten out any of his story, which was due to near constant interruptions no matter how many times he had told them to wait and ask their questions at the end. At this rate, he would never be able to give them all they needed to actually make an arrest. What they refused to understand was that he had never been asking for them to help him – it had always been the other way around. All he had _ever_ intended to do was help other people, not manipulate them into helping him clean up the messes he made. He would take responsibility for what he did, even if it would have to wait until the real masterminds were caught.

In all the time he was trying to set up the perfect defense to actually have the Clairvoyant arrested, he had found out more from them than he had told. He had learned that only Coulson, Skye, and Kara were behind the two way mirror, and that May and Trip wanted to try to bargain with him like he was the only guilty party in everything that had happened. After explaining himself to Fitzsimmons and apologizing to them both, gaining their forgiveness in the process, he didn't think he would have to feel that defensive again.

After a few moments of silence, he took a deep breath and looked at the people directly across the table from him. His voice was cool and even, like he really was in a casual conversation and not the middle of an interrogation. That's how they seemed to think this was going. “Fine. I'll skip to the end, but I want to be able to explain myself. Even the people I nearly killed let me do that much.”

**July 29, 2015**

He wasn't stupid; he knew meeting with a crime lord in a private setting with no backup wasn't the smartest idea he'd ever had. It didn't stop him from doing it, but he was fully aware of the numerous flaws in his plan. There were a number of things that could go wrong, and there were some of those that he couldn't possibly be prepared for, but doing something was important. He had his reasons for risking his life and his cover.

The nearest dock was long enough that he could build up momentum by running and then jump out and start swimming across the lake, but short enough that there wouldn't be much time for someone to pull a gun on him before he could get that chance. That had all been intentional. The Clairvoyant had only asked that they meet at the lake, and Grant had gotten to choose which dock they met by – which meant there were probably hit men and traps everywhere if he bothered to look hard enough to find them. This would be the only chance he got to meet the Clairvoyant in person, and if he blew it, there was a good chance he wouldn't even get to see the sun set in a few hours.

Grant had to keep his head in the game if he had any intention of surviving long enough to give away the crime lord's identity to the rest of the people he had come to call his team. If Fitzsimmons were in a room together, no one else would ever get a word in edgewise; if Skye was there, no work would be getting done for at least a few hours; May and Coulson were all business all the time; Trip was the new guy and had quite a bit to prove; but they were all practically his family. At least, they were far more like family than he would ever consider his politically driven brother to be.

He was doing this for them. It had stopped being for his brother years ago. Now, everything he was doing was to keep his newfound family from walking right into any kind of danger. They had to be prepared, and after today, they could be.

When the sound of footsteps on gravel broke through his thoughts, he took a breath and turned around. Whatever reason he had, the Clairvoyant needed to be faced, and he would do anything he needed to do in order to prove his loyalty to Hydra if that was what was asked of him. There were very few lines he wouldn't be willing to cross. At least, that was the plan until he saw the man walking toward him – the familiar face, the intelligent eyes that he had grown to trust, the hands that had held guns and cuffs and the file that had brought him down to the morgue the first day the second round of lies had started.

The idea that an officer at the same caliber as _John Garrett_ could be as dangerous and unpredictable as _the Clairvoyant_ was impossible, and he knew he would have to come up with some excuse to explain why he was there if they'd gotten any kind of tip about the meeting. If that was the case, John should at least be in his uniform. If that fact was anything to go off of, all he had to do was say he was meeting someone. All of the other details were no one else's business.

“I see I'm not the only one who happens to enjoy a day near the water.”

With a small nod, Grant took a deep breath and acted as though that was all his day entailed. The lake, the sun, a gun hidden in his jacket in case he needed to make a quick getaway if his meeting with the Clairvoyant went south – none of that was too abnormal. “Yeah. There's nothing like it.”

This conversation would need to wrap up quickly. If the Clairvoyant noticed him talking to a known officer, and if the topic changed to anything related to what he had been doing for the police, there was no way a single handgun would get him out of there fast enough to keep from getting caught or killed. He expected John to move on, to wish him a good rest of his day and get on with whatever he had planned to do at the lake that afternoon, but things never seemed to go the way he would expect, and this day wouldn't be any different.

With slow, careful steps, John walked in a circle around him, stepping into his personal space and reaching out to take the gun from his hidden pocket. He was actually _laughing_ , like anything about what was seconds away from happening could possibly be funny, and that alone made Grant uneasy enough to bite his tongue. If he said anything at all, it could be the wrong thing, and that was a risk he wasn't willing to take. When the older man moved again, it was to lean in, his voice just above a whisper, and the two words he uttered were enough to make Grant bite down even harder on his tongue, determined to not convey an ounce of surprise or fear. The insane nonsensical logic of the rest of his life told him something like this was something he should have anticipated from the beginning.

“Hail Hydra.”

**October 16, 2011**

An hour passed from the time he entered the station to the time he was actually called into the police chief's office. One full, nerve wracking hour of sitting on a bench usually meant for those being accused of something, waiting impatiently and trying to ignore the curious gazes of the three people he had properly met only a few weeks before. If even Fitzsimmons and Skye were unaware about what could have caused the chief to give him a call and have him panic for an hour, then it couldn't possibly be something good.

“Grant.”

Just the sound of his name being said like that made him have to inhale a sharp breath. He was in trouble for something, that much was certain, and there was a vast number of things that could be the cause of it. He had been working with _Hydra_ for over six months, to start. Something told him it wouldn't be like when he was younger, and saying “it was Christian's idea” wouldn't get him out of the consequences he had to face. Wait, no. It was exactly like when he was younger. Only, this time, people were actually dead because of his actions.

He stood, slowly, and followed the familiar man into the office he had just come out of. Nick Fury had been the police chief the last two times he had felt so guilty – when his younger brother had nearly drowned and when he had set his first fire – and it seemed that his status wouldn't be changing any time soon. If there was any way of actually getting out of the trouble he had gotten into, it would be telling the truth, no matter how difficult it would be. There was no way they'd let him keep his criminal cover when lives were lost because of it, but could he really give up what had become so much of his life for eight months?

They weren't the only two people in the room, and he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. If more people were there, did that mean he wasn't being called out on the fact that he was technically a serial killer along with an arsonist, or did that mean he only had more people to tell his story to? Of course, he had enough experience in this department's system that he recognized one of the other people in the room, to know that, while the woman was entirely unfamiliar, the man closest to the desk was Phil Coulson. The last time they had actually spoken to each other, Phil had only been a junior detective, determining the cause of the fire that had been set in the Ward family home. It really hadn't taken very long to find the cause when there had been a thirteen year old boy terrified of getting into too much trouble for what he had done. Now, it seemed, he was the station's current head detective. At least, he certainly wasn't the same junior detective he used to be.

“Congratulations on the promotion, _Phillip_.”

He was at just the right angle to see the unwilling smile that had started to spread on his face, and Grant's own expression was immediately smug. “Hello, Grant. Staying out of trouble, I hope?”

That was it. That was all he needed to hear to know that he hadn't been found out – yet – and that his cover would remain intact for at least a little while longer. A wave of relief surged through him, and it took every ounce of his available self control to not outright cheer. Even if he hadn't been caught by the police for working for Hydra, there was still the fact that he was there for a reason, and it was one he was determined to find out. In order to do that, he had to at least _appear_ calm and composed, and that could only be accomplished if he managed to respond without making things any worse. “You tell me. Is there a reason I'm being called on to speak in front of the class?” The sarcasm and wit were good. He would need them to successfully get through the rest of this meeting.

“You know, Grant, when I first met you, what was it? Fifteen years ago, now? I never thought I'd be calling you in here for help on a case.” Fury's words didn't clarify much, but it was very clear that he wasn't in any kind of trouble, for the time being. “It seems you made quite the impression on our resident _children_. It's funny. I've known you for quite a while, and I've known the three individuals watching that door from outside for a little less than a year now, and I never once expected _you_ to be the one to catch their combined attention.”

This was about the lies he had told Fitzsimmons and Skye, that at least made sense now, but if they were asking for _help_ on a case and he wasn't just calling in tips as soon as he was sure he wasn't being watched, he might actually get more done helping his brother than he thought he ever would. This could be a very good thing for everyone. “What can I say, Nicholas? Expect the unexpected.”

**February 23, 2011**

He had been jumped before he could get a block away from his apartment.

From what he could tell, he was in a moving vehicle, shoved into the back seat if he guessed correctly, and the road had become gravel for a few miles before the ride became even bumpier and more unpleasant. It was hard to tell how long they'd been moving when there was a sack over his head and the only sound besides the engine came from the front seat and it didn't even sound _human_. There was no telling how far they were from where they'd picked him up, and there was no way of knowing which way they'd even left the city, or if they hadn't just been going in circles for hours to scare him into thinking there was no way for him to get back without help.

When the car stopped, the door was opened and he was pulled out onto what he assumed was dirt and grass while the sound of something smaller was dropped down next to him. The first thing Grant assumed was the worst case scenario. Hydra knew all about his and Christian's plan, and they had picked him up to drive out into the middle of nowhere to perform an execution before he could do anything that might actually threaten them. It made sense, which was why he was confused when he heard the engine start up again and fade away.

As soon as he couldn't hear it anymore, he gave a tug on the loose rope binding his hands together and tugged the bag off from where it had been put over his head to keep him from seeing too much on the drive. His gaze was immediately drawn over to where something else had been dropped, the dark bundle of fur standing out in the bright grass it had been surrounded by. It was a dog, he could see that much, but nowhere near being fully grown, even if it wasn't exactly a puppy anymore. Tied to the collar was a piece of paper with a hasty scribble of the six legged creature that meant Hydra was behind this on one side, and a short, typed note on the other.

It took a few moments to get the small creature to stay still long enough for him to actually read what had been put down in ink on the otherwise pristine page and, once he could, Grant immediately wished that they'd made the decision to kill him instead of put him through whatever sick initiation ritual this was.

_Take care of this guy and yourself until I send someone to pick you up._  
\- Clairvoyant  
P.S. his name is Buddy

There was no telling how long he would be out there, waiting for someone to come and pick him up or find out what he was really doing and put a bullet through his head. He didn't even know if they _would_ ever be around to pick him up. No piece of evidence could ever paint Hydra or any member of the ring in a trustworthy light, and it would be reasonable to expect that they _already_ knew about the plan he and Christian had put into place. For all he knew, they'd left him there to die.

**July 26, 2015**

The place had been completely abandoned, which was a good thing and a bad thing all at once. With four of them tramping through what was once Hydra's main headquarters, it was best that no one else was there, but there was also the possibility that the warehouse wasn't _entirely_ abandoned, and that made all of them flinch whenever their own footsteps were too loud.

Two sets of footsteps echoed more than the others, and it would be abundantly clear to whoever bothered to spend more than a few seconds of thought on the process that they belonged to the people in the group that weren't trained for field work. It's the exact reason Fitzsimmons spent all of their time on duty in the station, either down in the morgue or sitting with Skye at her computer, but they needed people who would know how to handle a potential crime scene without interfering with what could be evidence.

Unfortunately, that meant bringing along the two least experienced members of what could barely be considered a team – Fitz to help collect what weapons they find to determine if they'd been used in any number of Hydra condoned hits, and Simmons with a chem kit to make sure they weren't walking into any sort of gaseous trap. With Grant and Trip as close to them as possible and armed, just in case, it almost seemed impossible for Hydra to get the upper hand when they were going to be there for less than an hour.

“There are no signs of any toxins in the air.”

As soon as the words were said, Grant pulled the warehouse door open, leaving the only trained member of their team to step inside, gun at the ready. If the big, main room could be cleared of all threats, they could cover more ground in far less time with less of a reason to worry. Getting in and out before any members of Hydra came back to see how safe it was for _them_ was their number one priority. Distracted by his thoughts, he didn't make himself move until after Trip had called the all clear and Fitzsimmons had already gone inside, leaving the door open behind them.

Technically, Trip was the superior officer among them, but three pairs of eyes looked to their resident “psychic” instead. Of all of them, he would be the most knowledgeable about the situation thanks to the abilities he had made up in a moment of panic. With a nod of his head, Grant scanned the room himself, not sure how much he would be risking his cover by giving directions to everyone else. “Fitzsimmons, there's a hallway that leads to some offices upstairs. We don't have Skye with us, so if one of you could get into their computers while Trip and I scout around down here, we can get out of here that much faster. If things go bad, if you need to get to safety and you can't get to us, the furthest office back has a window that will lead to the fire escape on the next building over – it's only about a five foot gap to the ladder. Be quiet while you're up there, too, just in case. We should try to hurry, all of us; the sooner we can leave, the safer we'll all be. Splitting up is our best option.”

**February 21, 2011**

There wasn't any script, but with the two of them, there wouldn't be a need. There wouldn't even need to be any acting involved if the right buttons were pushed and the right strings were pulled. Still, it had to start just right, or else it wouldn't look real at all, and selling it was one of the most important parts of their plan. The steps they were standing on were their stage, and any member of Hydra could be in their makeshift audience of bystanders and passersby. This was the moment the plan would go into effect, and if this didn't work, all hopes of getting an in with the city's biggest and most dangerous crime ring would be entirely lost.

“I've already told you, Christian, I don't want to work for you.” He made sure to raise his voice enough that it would carry, his expression calm enough to provide an uneasy contrast with the anger in his words. Grant wasn't acting, not even close, and something told him he wouldn't even need to try. “If you want some errand boy running around with coffee and memos, you can look somewhere else.”

The response he got only made it easier, the “act” escalating far quicker than either of them had planned. “Where am I supposed to look? Well, I suppose I could ask our other brother. Oh, wait, no I can't. He left town even before even you decided to and, I mean, with you back, it makes sense that Thomas wouldn't want to be stuck the same place. He would probably refuse to work for me on the basis that you might be too close. He would be terrified. You _did_ nearly kill him, all those years ago, if I remember correctly.”

It was amazing, the impact a reminder of something from so long ago could have, but the plan for the argument to continue in front of anyone willing to watch wasn't going to work for much longer. And by that, it meant that that plan had already been shattered and thrown away. In a matter of seconds, Grant forgot their agreement to not let things get too violent between them and launched himself forward, his hands very quickly going toward the collar of his brother's jacket.

“That wasn't my fault.” He tried to be threatening; he _needed_ to at least _sound_ like the memory wasn't tearing him apart from the inside out, but it was difficult when one wrong word could blow their entire plot to pieces and give too much information to those who happened to be nearby. “What happened to Thomas was _not_ my fault. You _know_ that wasn't my fault.” The fact that his voice was shaking didn't help matters at all, and he had one chance to change that before he would give up on the entire endeavor. “It was _your_ fault.”

There was too much movement at once for anyone to tell who had actually made the first move but, when the two brothers were pulled apart, blood was drying on the skin just under Christian's nose, and Grant had his hands still clenched into furious fists. The show of violence may have not been planned, but there would certainly be talk about it around the city for weeks to come, and it might just work out in their favor.

**August 4, 2015**

When all they were allowed to do was sit there in the uncomfortable, plastic chairs provided or go down to the hospital cafeteria to get food, nine days felt like so much more than that. Minutes felt like hours, and hours felt like weeks, and by the time he had settled down into his chair on the last day, Grant felt at least ten years older than he did before this entire mess started.

It didn't help that he knew all of it was his fault. He hadn't been told that _anyone_ was on the boat he had been instructed to destroy, let alone his friends, and the truth of the matter was that they were lucky to make it out of there at all. Still, if he hadn't agreed to his brother's stupid plan in the first place, there wouldn't have been a reason for them to be in danger, and one of them wouldn't be comatose in the bed only a few feet away.

Before then, it never occurred to him that time could stretch out to the point of driving him insane with worry, and he was minutes away from deciding to take a nap to help with the stress when he heard Jemma speak for the first time in nearly a week. Something about her tone was watery, like she was about to start crying, but he didn't know exactly why until he could actually hear her words. “Leo? Oh, thank goodness. Grant, fetch a doctor; he's awake!”

_He's awake._

It shouldn't be possible for two words to make a mountain's worth of worry and guilt disappear in an instant, and he almost pinched himself to make sure he hadn't already nodded off and started dreaming, but even while he was on his feet and hurrying into the hallway for help, they were the only coherent thought that his mind was capable of processing.

_He's awake. He's awake. He's awake._

The next hour passed quickly enough that the stark contrast with the stretched out week before that it was almost dizzying. Doctors were in and out of the room to check vital signs and basic brain functions, which meant they weren't allowed in the room for any of it, the professionals too concerned with the possibility that they might get in the way. When they were finally permitted to sit in the chairs they'd repositioned near the bed, it was with a warning.

“He won't be able to respond very much for a while after all of the damage he sustained. After going that long without a proper oxygen supply, there's no way of saying how much he'll recover, or when, or if he'll recover at all. There are some things we can do to try to help that process along, but there's no guarantees that we can make.”

The warning wasn't wrong, and the room seemed far too quiet even with the television on in the background. There was no point in it being on except to break the silence; none of them were paying a lick of attention to anything happening on the screen. _Someone_ needed to talk, if only to keep them all from going crazy in the near silence.

After a moment of deliberation, Grant took a breath and got to his feet, closing the door so that no one walking by would be able to hear what he wanted to say. When he took his seat again, he didn't have to look to know that they were both watching him silently, and he _couldn't_ look at them, not with all that he needed to say. He chose his words carefully, not bothering to attempt to stop the shaking in his voice while he stared at his hands. “Fitz, I have a lot to say, and all of it is what Simmons already knows, and I've already waited too long to tell you, too. If I say it while you can't talk, you can't yell at me – which Simmons did – and if I say it while you can't move, you can't hit me – which Simmons also did. It's a long story, and I want to start with the fact that _I am so sorry_.”

**October 16, 2011**

It took almost no time at all for everyone to gather down in the morgue, and _everyone_ consisted of quite a few people. Fitzsimmons weren't within two feet of each other, which was only strange because that was the only way he had seen them together, although that could have something to do with the body in the middle of the room and Fitz trying to stay as far away from it as possible while he could. Skye was sitting on the edge of a clean counter top, flipping through a file folder of what looked like printed out emails, thought it was hard to tell from where he was standing. Coulson and the woman from upstairs – he learned her name was Melinda May, but that very few people were actually allowed to use her first name – were standing on one side of the metal slab in the middle of the room. Grant himself was just trying to understand what the words that Simmons was saying even meant in the grand scheme of things.

“The victim's name is Thomas Nash. For the past few months, we had been looking into the possibility of him being Hydra’s infamous Clairvoyant, but considering it looks like a Hydra hit that did him in, it's very doubtful that that's the case. The cause of death is a long range shot through the forehead, and there's no exit would that I can find. On the off chance that he didn't die immediately with the impact, the lead from the bullet would have killed him rather slowly, and either of those are a very distinct possibility until I can run a full toxicology panel. Because of this, there's no way of telling when exactly the hit took place just yet.” After only a few moments, her gaze swept around the room to meet those of everyone else, leaving her explanation at that.

Quiet fell upon the room while everyone absorbed the meaning of the few sentences and, after only a few seconds, Grant's voice rang out clearly in the somewhat cramped room. “Last week.” All eyes went to him immediately, and the fact that he would have to quickly come up with some way to explain how he knew that wasn't as difficult as explaining himself two weeks before had been. “He was found in his home, right? And there's no sign of shattered windows? It would have been timed perfectly. They would have known which window he would open and when and had to have been ready to shoot at any moment.” He had scanned the file for the short moments when it had been within his line of sight in Fury's office, but regurgitating information like that wouldn't secure his ridiculous psychic charade. Knowing who exactly Hydra had sent to take care of the hit would do much more for his integrity. “Has anyone checked nearby rooftops? I mean, long distance means a sniper, and he would have seen someone in a window across the street. Rooftops are the next logical place to look. If there's no evidence up there, then you know whoever did this knows how to cover their tracks.”

That was enough for Coulson and May to start moving, barely dismissing the rest of them to go about their own business for the rest of the afternoon before making it out the door. They had an investigation to get underway, he knew that, but that didn't mean he was entirely comfortable being left alone with three people he didn't exactly know how to feel about.

Fitzsimmons were far too codependent for their own good, which had the odd effect of making him want to figure out who the Clairvoyant was that much faster. If he screwed something up, if either of them got hurt and he had to watch the other suffer because of it, it might just kill him in the process. Skye wasn't much different, except that she didn't have someone she shared brainwaves with by her side every second of every day. He had known them for only a few weeks, but the idea of any of them getting hurt because he couldn't do anything to hold off the danger that Hydra presented was almost the exact opposite of pleasant.

No one said a word while the four of them stood in the air conditioned room, because none of them could put what they were feeling into words, at least not in ways that anyone else would understand. All of them were scared and excited and wary and _ready_ all at once. This was just another day of work, and the bad people would be caught, and they would all go home, and the entire city would go to bed safer.

Except one of them _was_ one of the bad people, and there was no way he could tell them that without making things a thousand times worse. His lies were already set in place, there were already a number of covers he had to keep intact. Grant had made is bed, and no amount of guilt or fear could change the fact that he would have to sleep in it.

The three other people in the room didn't know that, and they never would unless there was a time when things would get far more dangerous than they already were. These people, the _kids_ he was hesitant to call his friends when he wasn't sure how they felt about him, were in far less danger sitting in the morgue and talking about what it would be like to be one of the people going into the fight, and he wasn't going to let their routine change until Hydra was far less of a problem. While he could still play his supernatural charade, he would, if only it would mean lessening the inevitable danger of the world only ten feet above them.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when he realized all three of them had moved closer to him, though none of them said a word until they were certain he was actually paying attention to them, as if his entire internal monologue hadn't been centered around the three pairs of wide eyes watching him closely. When a voice did break the echoing silence of the room around them, it was Fitz, and he seemed nervous, which was the only clue Grant needed to know he had been elected the speaker of the small, questioning group, but he hadn't had any kind of say in the matter.

“So, um, Coulson and May will probably be gone for a while, and we can't really do much until they give us more information, so we were wondering...”

Before he even got the chance to finish the question, Skye jumped in, clearly impatient with how slow things were going, and finished it herself. “You're psychic, right? You can see the future and stuff? We thought – okay, so it was mostly my idea to ask you – if you knew anything about us? I mean, it's fine if you don't, but honestly that would just be so cool. It doesn't have to be something big, or anything, but... maybe you could _try_?”

In the silence that followed her question drew out from seconds to over a minute, mostly because he had no idea how to respond. His “abilities” were just a cover, although he probably should have expected a line of questioning like this at some point. He had just hoped he would have more than a few hours to try to come up with something that he could say that wouldn't make it obvious he was a total fraud. There had to be _something_ he could say that was just vague enough to be true, but just specific enough to be something he could use.

They were probably expecting the clichés, the “you'll meet a tall dark stranger,” “next week's lottery numbers are,” “stay away from these foods,” and “things will get worse before they get better” nonsense most other fake psychics give out, but he had an entirely different idea of what he could tell them.

“Within the next ten years, two of the people in this room will be married to each other, one of you will learn a lot more about themselves, and...” Trailing off, Grant put two fingers to his temple and squinted for effect, letting a few beats of silence go by before finishing his sentence. “Someone is hiding something big.” The two years of theater he took in junior high came in handy while he stumbled back, bracing himself against the counter and trying not to laugh at how ridiculous he must look. If they were expecting a psychic, then he was going to sell the act for all it was worth. Which, admittedly, wasn't much. “Sorry, I couldn't get much more detail than that, and if I tell you the rest, it might upset the balance of the universe. I have the keep the universe happy.”

All of those things were most likely true, though the only thing he knew for sure was the bit he had slipped in about himself, which he hoped they wouldn't pick up on until he was able to tell them all the truth himself. Based on what he could see of their awed expressions, they had no idea he was the one hiding something, and there was a very good chance he would have to come up with more vague things to tell them as time went on, but at least they were pleased for the time being. There was no saying how long he would have to think of more “predictions,” which meant he should be brainstorming, not sitting around and chatting.

“That one was pretty big, or I'd try again. The little ones, like when I saw that file a few weeks ago, they're kind of like daydreams. I zone out for a minute, and then I'm fine, but I forced that one. Is there somewhere I could sit down?”

Before he had even finished asking the question, he was being ushered away and led toward a door in the opposite wall of the one leading to the hallway and back upstairs. Just beyond it was a couch, a small refrigerator, and a television sitting on what was supposed to be a coffee table. He assumed it was supposed to be an office, but it looked like a makeshift break room, likely for the three children – it didn't really matter how old they were when they acted and looked like they were all fourteen years old – who were insisting he relax. Really, he didn't see any reason not to.

**August 14, 2015**

“We don't want to sit around and listen to you tell us about the first time you worked with us or your issues with your brother, and the only thing this should have to do with Fitzsimmons is what you did to that boat.” May was far from happy with the detours that the story had taken, and it was more than clear just from her tone that she expected what happened on that day to be explained quickly so that they could move on.

Grant, on the other hand, wasn't about to let either of the people in the room with him control how he told his story. It was nearly three in the morning, and they all just wanted to be done with it, but there was a way he needed to get everything out, and that included talking about some of the things he had never talked to anyone about before – his initiation into Hydra, what happened between him and his family, the aftereffects of what he had done, all the stupid decisions he had made while trying to do the right thing. If he couldn't get the words out the way he wanted to, there was no point in saying them at all. “This has _everything_ to do with Fitzsimmons, and working with all of you, _and_ with Christian and Thomas.”

He didn't flinch when she leaned against the table to be closer to him, clearly intending to seem threatening so that they could skip to the real end of the story and make an arrest. “What do Fitzsimmons have to do with what you did, besides the fact that they were there? You said you didn't know they were on that boat, so _why_ are they so important to the meeting you had with the Clairvoyant?”

“ _Because_ ,” Grant's voice was just as firm and even as hers was, and he didn't hesitate before finishing his statement, knowing just how much of an impact the words would be. Of course they didn't understand why he had met with the Clairvoyant alone, because they didn't understand why he had decided to meet with the Clairvoyant at all. “I only agreed to meet with him because of a deal. If I did what he asked, if I _proved_ I was loyal to Hydra, he would answer my questions.”

“What questions could you possibly have had for him besides who he really was?”

Trip broke his silence again, fed up with watching the two of them volley questions and arguments back and forth. he had been the one to interrupt the least while the story had been told, and that was something that Grant appreciated when he had yet to go a full hour without May asking a question that was meant to be more accusatory than inquiring. Because of that, there was almost no hesitation before his question got an answer. “He said he would tell me where they were.”

**July 26, 2015**

It was no surprise that Grant had given them the right information to get around the warehouse, not when he had been the one to tell them where Hydra's unofficial headquarters was in the first place. His visions had come in handy more than a handful of times over the years, but no vision would have been enough to tell how quickly things would go bad.

Between the two of them, it was easy for Fitzsimmons to hack into Hydra's systems, and they took turns scribbling down numbers and names while the other listened for any sign of danger. Quick glances and sweeping gazes told them that there were exactly two ways out of the office they were in, and if they were unable to go through the door, their only option was a twenty foot drop out the window. That option wasn't ideal, and getting down the hall so that they could use the fire escape that Grant had talked about was much more preferable, but if the situation called for it, it wouldn't be impossible.

Jemma had just been passing the pen off to Fitz when the door swung open, and whoever had entered had been quiet enough that they weren't even aware they were no longer alone until the door was blocked by at least two other people while an entirely unfamiliar voice rang out from near the window. All three men held guns, and there would be no way of getting out of there without sustaining any serious injuries, or worse. “Do yourselves a favor and don't scream for your friends downstairs or make even a single move to do something against us. Step away from the desk and keep your hands right where we can see them. If you comply, we'll make this hurt significantly less.”

They backed themselves up against the wall and, staying alert of every gun pointed at them, lifted their hands in a gesture of surrender. If they shouted for Grant or Trip, they'd be killed, that much was perfectly clear, and they had no intentions of getting hurt. There wasn't a way to make any noise that would signal their distress to their friends, either, not without alerting those holding the guns to what they were doing. They'd been backed into a corner, and getting out of there alive was the least of their worries once the man near the window stepped forward.

He wasn't like the other Hydra members they'd encountered over the years, namely in that he was older, and the clothes he wore were clean and neatly pressed. Money wasn't what he was after in doing whatever the higher ranked members of Hydra asked of him, that much was clear, and, based on his graying hair, he wasn't one of the delusional ones in it for the thrill and adrenaline rushes, either.

“My name is Daniel Whitehall, and you've likely figured out by now that I am a part of Hydra. The thing is – Leopold, Jemma – I know quite a bit about you, too. I know that you're both rather young, untrained, but smart. And I know there are people who consider you both to be very important. The Clairvoyant knows this, too, and he would like to have a few words with you. Minds like yours could do Hydra a lot of good, so long as you know how to use them.”

Taking a step to the side, Fitz was able to put himself between his friend and the oncoming threat, but he hadn't accounted for the guns and the advantage that gave the criminals that had all but surrounded them. He didn't get very far before the echoing shot resounded through the small room, and he dropped to the ground with a yelp of pain while his hands immediately tried to stem the bleeding of the wound that marred the lower half of his leg.

There was almost the chance for him to speak, or for Jemma to kneel down beside him, but the same man who had spoken before made them both freeze with a cold note of laughter. “You should have listened and complied. Now, the Clairvoyant will have _very_ different plans for you.”

**August 18, 2011**

With all of the time he had been out in the middle of nowhere, Grant had come to the conclusion that he wouldn't be going back to the city for a very long time, if he was going to go back at all. He had long since come to terms with the fact that no one in Hydra was going to come to his rescue, and that there were very few people who would have even noticed his disappearance in the first place.

A year before, he would have been surprised to know that Christian was at the top of that list, but if he wasn't giving his brother updates on his Hydra infiltration, then surely _someone_ would be asking questions, and it certainly wasn't his parents. No, as soon as he had left town, the moment he was old enough, Grant had had every intention of cutting off all ties to his family. He had contemplated changing his name to make even more of a point, but filling out that paperwork would have led a trail right to him if they wanted to track him down, and he wasn't going to allow that.

Returning to town wasn't his intention until the job he had in his temporary hiding had stopped working out, when his employer had decided to pick up the business and move it overseas. He had been offered the same job if he wanted to move with them, though with a slightly smaller paycheck until they were set up with a stable base of operation, but the idea of living in France with little more than a month warning wasn't something that was all too appealing. Instead, he had moved back to the city he had once considered home, and while working for his brother was never at the top of his to do list, he had been stupid enough to go into a lunch plan because there was a very small part of him that thought their relationship might actually be _fixed_. He had _intended_ to show his family that he was capable of taking care of himself, not to take a job from his brother and get himself killed.

Six months later, he finally got at least some kind of contact with the world outside the few miles he had explored, though the fact that it was the Hydra car that had dropped him off in the first place wasn't something that made him feel great about what was going to happen. Grant stood up straight near the line of trees only a few yards from where the car pulled up, Buddy settling in at his feet without having to be told to stay close. In all the months he had been left alone, the one constant in his life was his furry companion, and with the almost immediate bond they'd formed, he wasn't going to give that up if he was being driven back to the city he should have never returned to.

When the man stepped out of the car's back seat – possibly the same man who had driven him out there back in February, though it was impossible to tell with how unclear those memories had become – he had a paper bag in hand, stopping not far in front of the person he was clearly assuming would listen to every word he said just because his jacket had a red symbol on the sleeve. He was clearly Hydra based on that alone, but that wasn't exactly new information to anyone who paid attention, and Grant was always paying attention.

“The Clairvoyant has a job for you, to prove you can be one of us. We'll be back tonight to make sure you complete it, and then you'll really be one of us.” He dropped the bag with a dulled thud on the grass, not dropping his eyes from the careful, guarded gaze of the politician's brother while passing on the four word message that had been drilled into his head during the entire drive down the miles of tree lines gravel and asphalt. “That's for the dog.”

It was never said, but Grant knew to stay quiet and still until the car was gone, driver and messenger not looking back the entire time they were in his line of sight. As soon as they rounded the last corner he could still see, he dropped to his knees and grabbed for the bag that had been left before him, opening it slowly and barely giving its contents a short glimpse before biting down hard on his tongue. Inside was something he hadn't expected to see, although he had known it wouldn't be something benign as soon as he heard the barely veiled order.

The gun was clean, practically gleaming with the light that filtered through the thin paper fibers of the bag it had been stored in. His instructions were clear, but nothing would be able to make him _kill_ the one friend he had made since he had moved back to the place he wanted to try to call home again, the one friend that didn't judge him based on his past or the cover he was trying to secure to help his brother in ways that were far from legal. If the only way he could do that was by sending his life into irreparable chaos again, then maybe following his old boss to France would have been the better option. Tipping his head back to look at the sky, Grant let out a slow breath and tried to figure out how long he had. He had no idea what constituted _night_ in the minds of murderers and thieves, but it was reasonable to assume the sun going down was part of it. If that was the case, he had around ten hours until sunset – ten hours to think, and ten hours to find a way around causing any harm to his best friend.

That's what he did. He thought and brainstormed and plotted and schemed and every other synonym that came to mind along the way, but when he heard a distant, sputtering car engine, he knew there was only one thing he could do, and that involved pulling the trigger.

*

From less than a mile away, the two men assigned to drive the old car through the woods heard the echoing sound of a single shot being fired and exchanged looks. The new kid had accomplished his task, and their next assignment was to pick him up and get word to the Clairvoyant as soon as they got back into the city. He would be pleased with the results of the endeavor, and they may even bring about a bit of ladder climbing and a pay raise for the both of them.

**July 25, 2015**

Four years was a long time to keep a cover as dangerous as his, but there wasn't any foreseeable way for him to give it up yet. The Clairvoyant was still out there, and identifying him meant more secretive undercover work that he couldn't even talk about to his closest friends. That's exactly what the three kids he had met one of those first months had become – Fitzsimmons and Skye were his _best_ friends, and that wasn't going to change any time soon. Telling them the truth would change too much, hurt them too much, ruin so much of the trust he had gained over the course of four years, that even thinking about dropping that kind of bomb on them was impossible. If he could help it, he wouldn't tell them at all, but with how long things were going on, he knew it would be inevitable. They were going to find out some day, but with a case lined up that they needed his falsely psychic help on, that day wouldn't be for at least another week.

There was another body in the morgue, which had long since stopped being a surprise or even disturbing. Their _jobs_ centered around dead bodies and how they'd gotten into the states they were in, whether it involved fire or guns or poison or blunt force trauma. If it was clear that Hydra was involved, which was a lot less often when so many of the crime ring's members were being picked up off the streets because of Grant's tips and “visions,” he was called in to try to work some of the magic he pretended to have access to. This was one of those cases.

This was _very obviously_ one of those cases.

“The tattoo here on his arm is clearly Hydra's chosen emblem. Based on the state of the skin around the ink, it's at least ten years old, much longer than we thought Hydra had been back for, and there's a scar on his shoulder, here, in the shape of a star, and it's much newer. There's no bruising around it, so it's safe to assume that it was made postmortem.” Everyone watched while Jemma pointed out the markings she had identified, not saying a word until she was finished. “There's no clear cause of death, even with the number of broken bones I've seen.”

Silence fell over the room, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that no one else was going to speak until Grant spoke up himself. “This was an inside hit. Hydra sent one of their assassins to do it, and I can't get a _real_ name, but does _the Winter Soldier_ mean anything to anyone?” He didn't know the man who was killed, but he would recognize the Winter Solder's signature anywhere.

The assassin had built up a debt to Hydra, though it was before he had joined up, so he didn't know how, and instead of repaying it or rolling over, the Winter Soldier was working for them. He was very good at what he did, even if it hadn't been his chosen profession. The star shaped marks he left on his victims mirrored the red tattoo he had on his own arm, and he had been doing things like this for long enough that he very rarely got caught.

No one else said a word except for Trip, who mumbled something just to signal that he had heard the question, though the quiet meant that the answer from everyone was _no_. That wouldn't do much at all, which was a concern, and Grant took a deep breath, closing his eyes. It seemed more acting would be necessary if he wanted anything to get done at all.

Something clattered to the floor when he stumbled back, not letting his arms swing to catch him until his lower back had already hit the edge of the counter. If he gave them enough information, catching a number of Hydra agents would be a piece of cake, even if the Winter Soldier himself wasn't there. Letting out a pained sound and shaking his head, he batted the hands of whoever had approached away, knowing that giving them this much information would be dangerous if they didn't know just how big it really was.

“There's... It's... A warehouse... I think… There's lots of people there – all Hydra; they have... Tattoos... Yeah, they're all Hydra, but I can't...” Gasping in a breath so that he could continue, Grant let his voice keep the pained note it held before he let himself collapse to the floor, rather proud of his finely honed acting abilities. Really, they weren't this good when he started the entire charade, and he had just that to thank for the fact that he should be winning Oscar awards, not putting on a show for a team of law enforcement in a morgue. “I can– I see a window! It's high, but it's... I can see outside of it. There's... There's a sign– no, a billboard! It's for... It's for some radio station – that alternative pop one Skye plays all the time!”

When he opened his eyes, he had just enough time to watch May and Trip dash out of the room, exchanging street names and potential locations for the Hydra headquarters – the very location he had all but told him the exact address of. There. Now, they'd get much more done, and things would be much less awkward. Although, things are never usually _awkward_ in their morgue meetings. Tense and somewhat scary when Fitz hadn't gotten enough sleep or May hadn't had her coffee, but never ever awkward. Something was up, and he had been stupid to not see it before. To be fair, he had been giving them the location to where about a dozen Hydra members would be at this time of day. He wasn't really focused on reading the room.

It was normal, during this part of the investigation, for the two detectives to run off and solve the case and Fitzsimmons to clean up the morgue while Skye went off get some snacks from the machine down the hall and Grant took some time to rest after whatever “vision” he'd had that had given the break in the case they'd needed. The four of them were usually allowed to do whatever they wanted for a few hours until they all celebrated a solved crime with a round of drinks or an early meal. They were a team, and he didn't like that it felt like they were keeping secrets from him, as if that wasn't the most hypocritical thing that had ever crossed his mind.

“Who was this guy, anyway?”

He was careful to make it sound like he was still short of breath while he pulled himself to his feet, slowly shaking his head. Maybe making some polite conversation about the case would bring about answers related to the almost melancholic atmosphere between them. It couldn't have had anything to do with Trip and May when they had just left and things were still abnormal, but what would _Fitzsimmons_ or _Skye_ have done – that didn’t involve any combination of the trio hooking up – that would warrant something like this?

“This name was Jasper Sitwell.” It was a surprise when Fitz spoke, mostly because the younger man was usually quiet until someone asked him a question directly or the topic was something he was passionate about. This wasn't either situation, which meant he was only speaking while Simmons and Skye couldn't. “He's worked here at the precinct for almost twenty years. No one knew he was working with them until this morning, when Jemma found his tattoo during the autopsy.” _Oh_.

In all his time undercover, Grant had never known of another mole, and the idea actually seemed insane. He knew the choices he made were to keep people safe, but it never occurred to him that there would be people with power outside of Hydra looking to sabotage the attempts to minimize the danger the crime ring brought to the city. If the betrayal of a detective like Sitwell, who he hadn't even seen in passing in all the times he had been there, was making this much of an impact on the people he knew as his friends, then they could _never_ find out about him. He wouldn't watch them get hurt like that.

**July 29, 2015**

He had been doing a lot of running lately, although there weren't so many instances where he had actually done so physically. The metaphorical sense was much more common, as much as he hated to admit it, and even while his feet hit down on the laminate floor of the hospital's hallways, his head was moving just as fast. He had to make sure the mistakes he made didn't have a deadly outcome on the people he cared about, and he had to make sure they never would. Of all of the mistakes Grant had made over the course of four years, or even in his entire lifetime, something told him that following the Clairvoyant's orders would rank within the top three.

The call from Skye had come in while he had already been breaking a number of traffic laws to make a few stops before he could let himself face them. Grant didn't need the phone call to tell him what had happened, not when he had been _there_ to see it for himself, but it was enough to remind him that committing murder and getting arrested wouldn't do anything helpful, for anyone. It was enough that he was in his right mind during an argument with his brother, and it was enough that he beat everyone else there, but that was easy enough when they were all busy investigating the fire that had put them in this position in the first place.

After a short discussion with the receptionist at the emergency room desk (“their families aren't here, as in, they're in _England_ and _Scotland_. No, I'm not a– the closest thing they have to significant others are _each other_. Look, I'm the mayor's brother, can't you let me in to see them just for an hour?”), he was given a room number and directions on how to navigate the halls, and that's when the physical running had started.

The metaphorical running had been going on since he had seen the two figures leaving the boat. Of course, the Clairvoyant's promise to tell him where Fitzsimmons were didn't include the stipulation that they would still be alive when he passed on that information. That promise was made when the crime ring's leader thought he would be telling Grant the location of two dead bodies at the bottom of the lake, not when the possibility of them making it out alive was a feasible one. Even now, that wasn't even a sure outcome. He had spent so long trying to keep the secret from everyone, he never thought telling them might keep them safer, but after what he'd done, after he had set that last fire, maybe telling them would have been a better option. Maybe, if they'd known about him, they never would have followed his directions and false predictions into the potentially deadly line of fire.

For the first time, he wasn't running away from having to let people in on his secret. He _wanted_ them to know, before something like this could ever happen again. There was no way on earth he was going to let any more of his friends get hurt because he had been stupid enough to _split up_ during a sweep of Hydra's headquarters, of all things.

When he opened the door, the first thing Grant noticed was the pair of eyes that flickered over to him, and the immediate sound of a chair moving across the floor afterward. She had every reason to be afraid of him and to try to keep the distance that had already been established for her personal safety and comfort, but he wasn't there to hurt them more or to finish the job or whatever conclusion she may have jumped to. Still, there had to be some way to say that and show that he meant it without making her look even more like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Simmons– Jemma, please, I want to explain.” In all the years he had known them, it was rare that anyone besides Fitzsimmons themselves referred to each other with first names, but they were friends, practically more than that, and the familiarity and informality that came with the term might make this easier for him. If he could convey with the words he chose that he wanted to have a conversation as friends, maybe she would listen to what he had to say, or at the very least stop looking at him like _that_. No other instance in his life came to mind when he'd seen someone so frightened, when he'd seen eyes that looked too big for someone's face because they were so terrified and furious and wary and _betrayed_. He had done some terrible things, but none of them had ever had consequences that made his gut twist quite like this.

“Get out.” It was no surprise that he could hear the shaking of her words, and he slowly lifted his hands to show that he meant no harm, though it would never convey just how much he never had. “This is your fault. _You_ did this! I want you out, and I want you to _stay out_ until I can call May or Coulson or Trip to lock you up!”

He deserved the shouting, he knew that, but it didn't stop him from stepping slowly into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him before finding a chair so that he could sit down. Yelling right back wouldn't make her listen, he knew that. This was _Jemma Simmons_ , a woman who thrived on logic and order and things that made sense – Grant lying to them and being Hydra all this time wasn't something that fit into the logical pattern. If he could be nonthreatening, which was something he had been trying _not_ to do for so many years – in front of his family and Hydra and the people who knew about what he was capable of and even the people he called his friends because he didn't want them to feel like the world would crash down at any moment – he could try to fit into the logic of the universe again. “I'm Hydra, you know this, but if you'll let me explain, I can tell you _why_.”

The silence in the room was only broken by the steady beeping of the monitors hooked up to the man in the bed he hadn't let himself look at yet, but the fact that the shouting had stopped only meant that he actually had a chance to get out his side of things. That was all he could ask for after everything he'd done. He didn't want forgiveness or pity or a therapy session about looking at his life choices, and he knew he wouldn't get it even if he asked. All he wanted was to explain, and maybe for someone to understand why he had never taken any of the ways out.

“When I came back to town, I went to have lunch with my brother. He wanted to get reelected, and I needed a job, but I was never going to work for him. After everything that happened when we were younger, I could never be in the same building as him for eight hours a day without wanting to kill him. But, he made me a deal, and it was a pretty good one. He wanted me to go undercover within Hydra, so that I could call in tips and May and Coulson could go and bring in the really bad people. It would get him reelected if the crime rate went down, and he was going to pay for me to live in the city for as long as I wanted.

“I did almost everything they wanted, even through the initiation they wanted me to do, but I didn't have to kill anyone until October. Ian Quinn – it was the first time I met you, when I brought the file down to you. That was my first hit for Hydra, and I checked him out before I did it. Quinn lied and stole and got away with all of it just because he happened to have money. It wasn't an accident, but I was good enough; I knew how to make it look like one, but I had to make sure you didn't know that's _why_ I said it was an accident. The psychic thing was all an act to just make you listen to me so that you'd trust me when I gave over more information when I had it.”

He had to take a break to breathe, though part of the pause was to let the woman he'd known for so long process what he had told her already. If the rest of the conversation could stay this civil, he would explain himself to everyone else, too, but there were pieces that he had to make sure the people he had hurt understood, starting with why their lives were nearly collateral damage in the charade he had never even meant to get caught up in.

“I had a lot of chances to tell you where their headquarters was, but I had to wait. After my initiation, I found out about their leader, the Clairvoyant, and I knew I had to figure out who he was. If I told you how to find everyone else without taking him down, too, then Hydra would just rebuild, and I might have blown my cover, and so many more people would have gotten hurt. I couldn’t let that happen. At that sweep, after the Clairvoyant had already told everyone in Hydra to clear out, I didn't think splitting up would be dangerous. I thought it would be safer, especially for the two of you. If you weren’t seen with me, we couldn’t be connected, and if my cover _did_ happen to get blown, you would have been fine. If we got in and out fast, we wouldn't have had to worry about being spotted or discovered, because I'd get the all clear signal from the Clairvoyant and the rest of Hydra first. I never thought I would be wrong, I swear.

“I met up with the Clairvoyant earlier today, at the lake. He said he would tell me where you guys were if I proved I was loyal to him and to Hydra. I thought he would keep you safe for leverage, and I would have the chance to fake another vision in front of May or Trip or Skye or Coulson and we would come and get you. He just told me to set the boat on fire because it belonged to someone who owed Hydra a lot of money. He _never_ told me you were on board. If I knew, I would never have done it. Please, just know that I never wanted to do anything to hurt anyone, most of all any of you. I did this for so long to try to _help_ people. I never thought following those orders would put you in more danger. I'm so sorry.”

The story was short when he only told the essential pieces, but if there were questions that needed to be asked, he would answer them willingly, if only it would make the tension in the room lessen. She had every right to still be mad at him, especially with how much he had admitted to doing, but a few more answers might show much how much he was telling the truth, how much he would _always_ tell the truth so long as it kept people safe. The only people he had ever meant to hurt were the people that deserved it, and isn't that how the entire justice system worked? Maybe it was an overly simplified version of the process, but it wasn't _wrong_.

When he could see her getting to her feet, he almost relaxed. If Jemma of all people could understand his reasons and help him explain them to everyone else, it would make his life about a thousand times easier. He expected this, the anger and fear and frustration, and he knew just an explanation and an apology wouldn't make everything better, especially not when they were sitting in a hospital room because their friend was comatose after everything that had happened in the last seventy two hours alone. What he didn't expect was the sharp sting that came with her hand making violent contact with his cheek, although he knew he probably deserved that, too.

She surprised him again, this time by contrasting with the shaky, terrified tone she'd used before. Her voice now was pure anger and fury and he almost made a comment about Fitz's Scottish temper rubbing off on her until he thought better of it. Letting her vent and be angry with him was something they could all benefit from, in the end, and getting her any angrier may very well get him killed if he wasn't careful.

“If you came in here expecting _that_ to make things better, you are _so_ wrong. I'm not going to forgive you until my best friend wakes up from the coma that _you_ put him in, and even then, don't expect anything from me. Don't you see the kind of mess you've made? You could have killed us, and all you're doing to make it better is giving me excuses and apologizing like that will be enough to make him open his eyes! _I_ may be okay, but Leo might still die because of you!”

With how rarely the name was used, it was easy to forget that _Leo_ and _Fitz_ were synonymous. Though, most of the time, they weren't. _Fitz_ was every day. It was the name he went by with coworkers and friends and strangers because it wasn't so embarrassing. If anyone was in the morgue, they would certainly hear the occasional _oh, Fitz_ from Jemma if he was complaining about the mess or the smell or how contaminated his lunch got that day. But to hear _Leo_ was like having his heart ripped from his chest. If she was using _Leo_ , there was no way to argue that things were bad. It wasn't a playful scolding or a sign of slight annoyance or frustration. _Leo_ was like a hurricane driven by Poseidon's fury, or a wildfire that had gone out of control, or an earthquake that could level a city. _Fitz_ meant that there was still hope for a positive outcome or that the sun would still come out from behind the clouds; _Leo_ meant that the only thing ahead of them was hell.

After a moment, Grant let himself move, using his feet to push the chair back and reestablish a bit of space between them. He had been expecting this, too, or at least knew he should have been, but that didn't mean she was going to scare him away from doing the right thing. The Clairvoyant was still out there, and would get word of Fitzsimmons' survival soon enough with the pull he had on both sides of the law. If he decided to come down here and use that leverage he had to get to them, to finish the job that Grant couldn't, and no one was there to protect them, it would still be his fault. After everything that had happened, he owed them at least as much to not let them get killed when they barely made it out of the last brilliant idea he had alive.

“I know I haven't fixed anything, and I know so much more could happen between now and whenever Fitz wakes up, and you probably don't trust me at all right now, but I need you to. I need you to at least try to understand that me being here will keep you safer than if I were to leave. If you don't want me in here, I get that, and I can go sit in the hall for days or weeks or however long it takes, but you'll both be safer if I stay in here. Can you please trust me at least that much?”

With how quiet the room got after his words, he almost thought she'd kick him out, or tell him to go get himself locked up again, but a small nod was all he needed to know that, at least for a little while, he was allowed to sit in that chair and hope their friend woke up. If he didn't, it would only add to the lengthening list of Grant's regrets, and with how long that list already was, sitting here and not being able to do anything to help while it only got longer might be the thing that killed him.

**July 26, 2015**

The main room was easy to sweep through, considering how open it was. From any inch in the room, they could see every entrance and hear the echoing of their careful footsteps while they searched every possible nook and crevice for weapons or usable evidence. There were hidden places that some of the worse weapons were held, the ones that most of the world didn't even know existed yet because of the money that had been put toward making sure they got them first, but if Grant were to show anyone how to get into those places, that would involve telling his secret. He'd seen how people had been affected by the news of a Hydra member among their own, and at least another four years would go by before he even got close to telling anyone the truth.

When they'd gotten most of what they found identified and labeled, he took a breath and looked toward the stairs. If they could finish things up quickly, going up to help Fitzsimmons with whatever they still had left to look over would make it easier to get out of there that much faster. Until then, all he could do was hope they didn't get themselves caught by a stray Hydra affiliated criminal. He helped with the last batch of guns and knives, and they'd just been about to discuss taking everything out to the car before checking out upstairs when the telltale echo of a firing bullet made them both look up toward the block of offices above their heads.

It took a bit of talk from Trip just so that he wouldn't immediately go running up there without some kind of weapon. They couldn't go in unarmed when there were already potential casualties, no matter how much he didn't want to acknowledge that lives might have already been lost. He had the gun he'd been issued specifically for the sweep at his hip, but if the people upstairs were armed, too, that wouldn't do much for him. The amount of self control he needed to keep from breaking into one of the hidden storage units in the walls so that he could grab a _real_ weapon was startling, but in an emergency like this, the real detective by his side didn't see much of a problem with using something with a little more power from Hydra's own stash.

They took the stairs two at a time and followed strict instinct toward the only open door in the hallway, but it wasn't fast enough to stop things from only getting worse. What they saw when they finally got there wasn't entirely pleasant, and was much closer to the opposite. If he had the option to go back, to stop himself from giving the order to split up, from sending the two untrained _kids_ that had been in his care for only a few hours into a dangerous Hydra trap, Grant would do it in a heartbeat, if only so that he didn't have to look at the drying blood on the floor, or the shell near the door that told him just how close range the shot was. If it hit any main veins or arteries, the victim of the impact was either dead or about to be.

He wanted to scream, and he likely would have had he been alone and not trying to help on an actual investigation. If he had the option to trash the entire office and use one of the other computers to find the Clairvoyant's identity and track him down, he would do it. Without hesitation, if it meant keeping the people he had never meant to care about out of danger, Grant would be the one to make sure a bullet went straight through the chest of the man responsible for all of this.

**August 18, 2011**

The sound of popping coming from the microwave almost made him bounce on his toes, knowing for certain that a night of popcorn and _Doctor Who_ shouldn’t be this exciting, even if Fitz did happen to make the plans himself. For the most part, convincing Jemma to go along with it was easy. He had been able to sway her with the promise of a few choice David Tennant episodes once they watched his favorites, and he was almost certain not all of the popcorn was for him. She had brought two big boxes of the microwavable kind, complete with movie theater butter, and even if he wanted to, there was no way he would be able to eat all of it by himself.

When the popping slowed, he opened the small door and pulled out the bag with a wide grin. British television and an abundance of snacks until the early hours of the morning might be the closest he would get to heaven without actually dying, and the fact that it was all being done specifically _for_ him only made it that much better. It wouldn’t technically be his birthday for another three hours, but it was close enough that this was the perfect celebration.

“Fitz!”

The sound of his best friend’s voice from the living room made him pause in dumping the bag’s contents into a bowl, and he stepped out of the kitchen so that he could go and investigate. The chances of the situation being anywhere near an emergency were slim to none, but there was no harm in checking. When he poked his head around the corner to look over at her with a concerned frown, he saw that nothing was wrong.

She sat calmly on the couch, reading the backs of the cases of DVDs and occasionally frowning at the slips of paper that said which episodes were on which disk of the set. Not an emergency, then. “Are we going to start with _Rose_ , or did you want to start at _Empty Child_ and watch from there? If we jump around, some of the narrative won’t make sense.”

That actually brought a smile to his face. Leave it to Jemma to worry that, after watching through what had already been aired of the series upward of ten times, the narrative of a major arc wouldn’t make sense to them. They would be fine, he was sure, but he did have a list of specific episodes he wanted to watch. “I was thinking of jumping around, but we can watch a few good episodes in the order they aired. Maybe _Empty Child_ and _Doctor Dances_ but then skip to _Bad Wolf_ and _Parting of Ways_? We’ll get to Tennant that much faster, too.”

At the sight of her enthusiastic grin at the idea, he went back to the kitchen to grab the bowl of popcorn he had been preparing, adding just enough salt to give it the flavor it needed before even thinking about rejoining her in the living room. This was technically his night, and everything was going to be _perfect_ or he would have a very serious letter to write to whoever controlled the universe. Or their secretary, whoever opened their mail.

More than a handful’s worth of popcorn fell out of the bowl when he dropped down onto the couch, but all he got for it was a short, annoyed roll of the eyes. If she was annoyed by the mess, fine, but that wouldn’t make him clean up any faster. If he could help it, the fallen pieces wouldn’t be cleaned up until at least after they fell asleep on the couch, just like they did every other marathon night. Still, even if he _was_ going to be stubborn, he almost groaned just at the thought that Jemma was going to be annoyed at him for any amount of time.

In the end, she hadn’t even pressed play yet when he began plucking up the pieces of the fallen snack from the cushions, none of them making it back to the bowl when his mouth was a much better option. When he peeked over at his friend only a few minutes into the episode, he almost groaned all over again, although it was for a slightly different reason. Of course, she _would_ see this as a victory. She had gotten Leopold Fitz to clean up a mess he had made without even saying a word. It would be in record books for years to come, he was sure.

He stayed quiet, slowly lifting the bowl from his lap while her eyes were trained on the screen in front of them. If he could keep up the near silence, and if she kept her focus on the episode, he would have enough time to get the bowl high enough and…

“If you dump _any_ of that on me, I’m leaving, and you’ll clean it all up yourself.”

His prank could wait.

They watched through the rest of the episode without any incident, and the credits were rolling when Fitz got to his feet to refill the mostly empty bowl of popcorn. If he hurried and got back before they were too far into the second part, he wouldn’t miss his favorite scenes. It wasn’t something he had to worry about for long, not when Jemma knew to press pause before the introduction could start, and the microwave had already started its snack making process when he looked up to see her standing in the doorway.

“Fitz?” This wasn’t like the first last time she’d tried to speak to him while he was preparing their food; it wasn’t curious and wondering and eager. She actually sounded _worried_. For a coroner who saw the insides of dead bodies every day, who wasn’t even afraid of alien moving statues that could teleport people to another time, the fact that she was worried about something within the thirty seconds he’d been in the kitchen was concerning. “There’s something outside.”

Immediately, he walked back out into the small room that held his television and worn, old couch, not sure what he could possibly do to fend off someone with a _Doctor Who_ boxed set but grabbing it anyway. Whoever or whatever was out there wouldn’t be for much longer, if he had any say in things. It wasn’t until he got closer to the door that he heard the faint scratching, like something was rutting against the door separating his home from the elements, and that only made him wary. A box of DVDs wasn’t going to make someone leave, not even in an impossible, creative way like he saw in movies, and it wasn’t like he could throw it at an animal and expect it to not fight back. If he wanted to get anything done, he had to assess the situation first.

Slowly, he pulled the door open and prepared to be attacked, whether it was by a person who had lured him out or by some animal that had been disturbed by their science fiction viewing choices. Instead, when he looked down, he saw a dog, sitting on the welcome mat less than a foot from him, making a dark contrast with the pale color of the carpet and seeming to almost be pleading with its eyes. Or, he wasn’t going to be attacked, and it was just a lost pet.

Once he was down on his knees, Fitz took a closer look, a bit surprised by how easy it was to get the creature to stay still while he looked it over. Whoever this dog belonged to, they’d done a terrible job of claiming it – no tags, no collar – but it was certainly well trained. All it needed was a something to eat and a bath, and then it would look like it had been brought directly to them from the pet store.

He turned around and saw Jemma standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, moving to the side so she could see what had actually disturbed their evening. The idea that they’d been afraid and worried about a dog of all things seemed ridiculous when they thought about it, but they could probably claim that it was much bigger if they ever told the story to anyone. They would probably _never_ tell the story to anyone.

As soon as the dog was cleaned up and taken care of, they would be finding the real owner and returning it.

**July 29, 2015**

It didn't take a genius to know that the point of pressure against his chest was the gun that John had swiped out from under Grant's own jacket, and it took even less brain power to know that his use of the crime ring's well known greeting wasn't anything close to sarcastic. If anyone were to ask, he would bet his entire life savings, along with his brother's, on the possibility that, while waiting for the Clairvoyant, he had really been waiting for John Garrett, no matter how impossible the idea would have seemed even just that morning. He closed his eyes when he heard the click of the gun's safety, not about to give away the fact that he was terrified out of his mind. His goal had been to get information, and to pass it on to someone at the station, potentially to Garrett himself, so that no one there would be walking into another trap.

In the process, it seemed as though he had walked into a trap himself.

“I'm going to make this very brief, and I'll do my best to keep it simple so that you don't get too confused along the way. I know what you've been doing, Grant – I know about your lies, and about what you've been doing for your brother, and that your loyalty is _not_ to his reelection campaign. You're Hydra material. You're one of the best arsonists I've seen in my time in the ring. What I _don't_ understand is why you agreed to come out here, _alone_ , just to know where your two pet projects are. I gotta tell you, Grant, splitting up in that warehouse – _not_ smart when I have people looking around. And coming out here alone? I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up meeting the same fate they will.”

The effort used to not even flinch during the entirety of the speech was excessive, but not enough to miss the meaning of John's last sentence. For the moment, Fitzsimmons were okay, or at least alive, and if he could talk his way through this right, they'd stay that way.

Clearing his throat, Grant stood up straighter, using every inch he had to appear as tall as possible. He needed to show that fear wasn't going to affect his decisions, and being more threatening than _Garrett_ was the first step to that. “I made bad decisions sometimes. I'm only human.”

By some miracle, his voice stayed steady, and biting the inside of his lip only did so much to stop his relieved half smile when those sentences drew out a laugh from the person he was trying to stall. “I remember now why I haven't talked to you sooner – you're funny. Look, I don't want to kill you, kid, but I will if I see any reason that doing just that would be beneficial to me. You haven't ratted me out to Coulson yet, but I can't take _that_ as a sign of loyalty when you didn't even know who I really am until just now. No, no, no. I need you to prove something to me, and then I'll tell you where I put Fitzsimmons.”

“Anything.” Proving his loyalty to Hydra was all he needed to do, and that was something he knew before the meeting had even been set up. Initiation would have never been enough to prove himself, especially when he didn't even technically complete it; doing one thing to keep at least one of his covers intact would only do more for him in the long run.

The expression on John's face only served to assure him of that much, and he listened to the instruction he was given, already figuring out the perfect way to get everything done without leaving any sort of trail that would lead to him. If he was going to rescue Fitzsimmons, it wouldn't do anyone any good if he got locked up for arson and Hydra connections before anything he did could have a positive effect. He had to keep himself out of hot water if he wanted to do anything to help his friends.

**August 14, 2015**

“Grant, if you don't give us the information we need, we can't-”

“Haven't you been _listening_?” Shaking his head, he cut off May's further attempts to make a deal he didn't want. If anyone had been listening to a single word he had said since he had been in that room, they'd know he had already given them everything they needed to know. Apparently, admitting to being a part of Hydra to help a political campaign and lower crime rates meant he didn't get to rat out the very person who was technically responsible for the near deaths of two of their own. “I've told you why I did it, I've been giving you names for _years_ so that I could be helpful, I've never done anything that would hurt anyone besides the assignments I've been given to keep my cover. I just _told you_ who the Clairvoyant is! I don't know what more you want me to tell you.”

There was silence for a few moments while both of the detectives he had told his story to frowned at him from across the table. In the end it was Trip who finally put the pieces together and spoke up, breaking the tense quiet that had fallen upon the interrogation room. “Grant, you can't possibly be saying what I think you're saying.”

He leaned forward in his chair, making unwavering eye contact with the both of them before slowly saying the words they were all dreading. “If you think I'm saying that John Garrett is a member of Hydra, you're right. But he's not _just_ a member, he's their leader. He calls the shots. _He's_ _the Clairvoyant_.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because of procrastination, the second half likely won't be posted on Saturday, but it will be posted by or on Wednesday the 19th! And, for those wondering, yes I do plan on doing more with this universe.


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